The decisions that shape most of a site, and the trade-offs behind each: who owns the content, how templates read it, and where fields are defined.
A few decisions shape most of a site, and they are easy to make by accident while writing templates. The pages in this section explain what each choice does in the CMS. There is almost always more than one valid way to build a site, so treat these as questions to think through and write your reasons down, not as rules.
Four questions to answer on purpose before you build: • Who owns each landing route for a family of cards: the Datastore itself or an Article? (Landing Page Ownership) • How is each listing populated: editor picks, a fetch, or both? (Picks, a Fetch, or Both) • Which fields do several datastores share, and do fields live on the Datastore or on a partial? (Where Datastore Fields Live) • Where does a block that appears in more than one place come from? (Shared and Pageless Content)
Two related choices are covered separately: whether a section's content is static or queried (Choosing a Content Architecture), and which template defines each custom field (Where Custom Fields Belong). Which CMS objects a finished site needs is covered in Site Objects Checklist.